A while ago I searched Netflix Instant for “Netflix” (BRAAAAHMM) and this is what I found. This video has several duplicates on Netflix, presumably because it’s test footage and there are many variable to test. Hypnotized, I watched it over and over, imagining what went into it, who thought of the ideas, whether or not they intended to traumatize me, etc. It starts off as a very plain collection of ambience. Then, just after a minute, a hand appears. A human hand, the hand of a stranger, slowly and intimately fingers the waterfall of a babbling fountain for well over thirty seconds. The kind of thirty seconds where you’re like, wow that was thirty seconds? That felt a lot longer, I can’t believe seconds can be so slow. At the three minute mark a Strange Man darts about. Is he the hand? Does he have agency? Is he as forgettable and useless as the scenery? HELL NAW, because then he moonwalks behind fountains with a laptop in his hand, and suddenly he is the God and we his subjects. Bow down before his cartwheels and dad clothes. Cut to trains. The babbling water is as constant as lunar silence. The Strange Man treats us to a silent babbling carnival, full of soccer ball tricks and juggling acts. Suffocatingly amateur Shakespeare monologues and the abject horror at the Eight Minute Mark. If this isn’t the weirdest thing on Netflix, I must know what is.

This is in my sweet spot (being responsible for probably a quarter of the 12,000 views of K-01 Test Footage and other such camera crap). This is how weird old men spending six hours on a park bench are bred.